In the last years, an increasing extension of telecommunications networks took place all over the world, e.g. of wire line communication networks or of wireless communication networks, such as broadband networks, the Internet and other packet based networks based e.g. on the Internet Protocol (IP), Ethernet, MPLS/GMPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching/Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching) or related technologies (e.g. using optical transmission based on SDH/SONET (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy/Synchronous Optical Networking) and/or WDM/DWDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing/Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing)), or such as the cdma2000 (code division multiple access) system, cellular 3rd generation (3G) communication networks like the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), enhanced (or cellular 4th generation (4G)) communication networks based e.g. on Long term evolution (LTE), cellular 2nd generation (2G) communication networks, or other wireless communication system, such as the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX).
Recent technology progress deals with network virtualization, the use of which promises additional flexibility, especially regarding scalability and or fast service implementation of new communication services, and offers opportunities for deploying future network architectures. Basically, network virtualization is a concept to create logical network resources, e.g. virtual nodes and virtual links, which form a virtual network, from physical resources.